


A Severed Head

by mydogwatson



Series: Postcard Tales II [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Slash, Ruminations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a few seconds to think about things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Severed Head

**Author's Note:**

> I will blame it on delayed jet lag or being drunk on London, but when I pulled this postcard out several weeks ago, it took me nearly ten minutes to realise…uh, severed head?? Well, duh.
> 
> Hope you like.

Really, John decided glumly, he had to be mental. More mental even than Ella had ever diagnosed. After all, how important were a few [well, more than a few] screaming nightmares, a limp, or a slightly shaky hand, really? Commonplace. Almost boring.

Honestly, though, it took a special kind of crazy, didn’t it, to willingly live in a place where you could open the refrigerator in search of something edible and find a human head staring back at you? Anyone with a bit of common sense would have packed his bags and fled that flat immediately. And not looked back.

But John Hamish Watson was still in 221B.

Well, not at the moment, sadly.

At the moment, Baker Street was only a distant and very fond memory, wherein the odd severed head or two didn’t really matter at all, in the grand scheme of things. Especially since that Grand Scheme now seemed to include the imminent death of both Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. This was the kind of thing that happened, apparently, if one catered to the whims of a psychopathic killer.

All fun and games until somebody ends up being blown to bits.

The unfair part was that John knew that he personally had not done any catering at all. No, that was down to the same monumental git who thought leaving the heads of dead people in the fridge was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Hello, world, meet my idiot flatmate.

If further proof of his unsettled mental state was needed [although it probably wasn’t] there was the fact that even now, when he was facing an immediate and unpleasant demise, John could still not bring himself to regret the choices that had brought him to this moment. After all, everybody had to die sometime and if given the choice between bleeding out all alone on the sand of Afghanistan or going out in a flash of noise and light and smoke with Sherlock Holmes at his side, there was no doubt which he would choose.

Let the shrinks make of that what they would.

He looked up and met Sherlock’s gaze and knew immediately that he had never been closer to any other person in his entire life. Sherlock’s eyes were determined and a bit sad.  
He accepted that he was going to die, but somehow John knew that even if he’d lived another fifty years, he would never forget the expression that had been on Sherlock’s face as he tugged John out of the explosive vest. At least that memory could go with him.

John decided it was a bit of a shame that whatever it was that so often flashed between them [after a case, over Chinese at 3AM, when they could not help giggling at an inappropriate moment] would never have a chance to grow and turn into whatever it was supposed to be. That would have been good, John thought.

Still, they’d had a brilliant, albeit brief, run together and he was grateful that at least he wasn’t going to die as the unhappy shadow of himself that he’d been on the day Sherlock Holmes swooped into his life. And made it so much better.

He gave a faint nod and almost smiled, because, well, it was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

*

As it happened, they didn’t die at the pool that night.

Instead, they went back to Baker Street and had tea.

Neither of them mentioned the looks they had shared that evening or what the glances they were still sharing might mean. And that was fine with John. Some things needed to happen in their own time and the best things could not be hurried.

They had time, after all. He was willing to wait.

When he found another severed head in the refrigerator a week later, John just named him Oscar and gave him no more thought.

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch


End file.
